Ady, Black Sun - (World Writing in French: New Archipelagoes)

Book Synopsis

When Man Ray, forty-four, and Adrienne Fidelin, nineteen, cross paths at the Bal Colonial on Rue Blomet during Paris' roaring twenties, an intense four-year love story is born. The four years of complicity and passion mark both of them for life, before their story is brutally interrupted by the war.

Gisèle Pineau brings this suspended period of happiness back to life. Forced to leave her native Guadeloupe for Paris at the age of fifteen, the spontaneous young Ady soon charms Man Ray and finds herself swept along by the great American artist into the bohemian life he leads with his friends. In Montparnasse, as well as during the summers in Mougins with Paul and Nusch Éluard, Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, the sexual and intellectual freedom is unparalleled. Naked bodies are exposed to the sun or to Man's lens; Ady, Lee and Nusch indulge in endless delights. The true story recounts a golden age, a time of innovation and creation, a volcanic life whose protagonists are giants of art history.

Ady is a dazzling muse, Man Ray's "black sun" - a woman full of grace, who, according to Éluard, had "clouds in her hands".